When we come to the New Testament, after Pentecost, when all nations are invited to worship the Lord where they are—without the need for a tabernacle or temple in Jerusalem—then not only does the church get to look back on the regeneration images that they were given in the Old Testament, but also the church receives a ceremony which beautifully signifies this key moment at the beginning of the Christian-life… namely baptism. Baptism and regeneration continue to be very much linked…
Titus 3:5, ‘He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.’
Nicodemus should have known this, because he had verses like that in his Bible too. Ezekiel 36 for example…
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Which goes some way to explaining why the Lord Jesus describes regeneration as—John 3:5— being ‘born of water and the Spirit’. Because regeneration and baptism are very much linked, and regeneration—just like washing did in the tabernacle—comes immediately after the gospel-call, and—logically—has to come before anything else.
Which is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 that, ‘The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’ And why he says in Ephesians 2 that we need to be made ‘alive with Christ’ when we are—by nature— ‘dead in transgressions’.
